Consortium Projects

The Biennial Consortium is a selective network of New York City’s art and cultural institutions, all presenting and supporting performances and exhibitions that align with the Performa 17 biennial. These series of partnerships and co-presentations highlight the myriad of art and cultural events that make New York the performance capital of the world every other November. The Consortium celebrates the creative history of the city and its legacy of radical performance that, since the 1950s and 60s, has brought together artists of all disciplines and made New York the center of the international avant-garde.

From the very first biennial in 2005, Performa established collaboration as the heart of the biennial, setting the stage for city-wide partnerships.

Buffer is a perception-altering new work by Xavier Cha, the 2017 Harkness Foundation Artist in Residence at the BAM Fisher, as part of Performa 17. Comprising three scenes that toggle back and forth like browser windows in a state of perpetual buffering, it lays bare the intimate yet alienated relationships we have with the bodies on our screens.

Tickets start at $25; Subscription discount applies to Opera House and Harvey Theater presentations only. BAM Fisher presentations are all $25 and are eligible for a subscription package.

Video and performance by Narcissister, whose live works deploy humor, pop songs, elaborate costumes, and her trademark mask – all tools in dismantling what Stuart Hall calls "fixed and closed stereotypical representations.” Short-form live works are interspersed with performances made for camera, and each evening concludes with a respondent in conversation with Narcissister.

Japanese-born choreographer Eiko Otake creates a durational movement and video installation inspired by post-nuclear disaster Fukushima that challenges the spaces of all three of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s locations.

African Artist Kendell Geers loves to hate and hates to love the father of conceptual art. In this spoken word ritual killing of the father, historical fact, mythology, fiction and fantasy are blended in a quasi-art historical spoken word performance.

A man and a woman stand off in poetic battle, holding between them a double sided mirror using only their body weight and pressure to keep it from falling. If either loses their step or fails to resist, both will fall and the illusion shattered.

Roberts and Wilson, commissioned by Storefront, collaborate with Harlem-based after-school drumline and dance team the Marching Cobras of New York to explore the significance of marching as an act of both cultural expression and political resistance.

Japanese-born choreographer Eiko Otake creates a durational movement and video installation inspired by post-nuclear disaster Fukushima that challenges the spaces of all three of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s locations.

Merike Estna’s new performance Red Herring and Maria Metsalu’s Mademoiselle X are part of Soft Scrub, Hard Body, Liquid Presence exhibition. The exhibition posits if our over-consumption of virtual space has provoked a deep mutation in the psychosphere and explores the zombified body as a response to today’s evolving societal structures.

Japanese-born choreographer Eiko Otake creates a durational movement and video installation inspired by post-nuclear disaster Fukushima that challenges the spaces of all three of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s locations.